If the legal system works as intended, the blast radius isn't too big here and something Anthropic will accept even if it hurts them. Maybe they even win and get the supply chain risk designation lifted. But I have zero faith that the legal system will make a difference here. It all comes down to how far the administration wants to go in imposing it's will.

Bleak.

Sure, there will be a court battle, but I don't think these companies want to take that chance. They'll capitulate after the lawyers realize that option is on the table.

The new thing that I know about leading AI companies that aren't Anthropic (i.e. OpenAI, Google, Grok, etc) is that they knowingly support using their tools for domestic mass surveillance and in fully autonomous weapon systems.

It’s clear that this is mostly a glorified loyalty test over a practical ask by the administration. Strangely reminiscent of Soviet or Chinese policies where being agreeable to authority was more important than providing value to the state.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_Resources,_Inc._v._Tr...

So yeah, extremely few have.

1) The US gov generally does have close partnerships with most large-scale, mature tech companies. Sometimes this is just a division dedicated to handling their requests, often it’s a special portal or API they can use to “lawfully” grab information from for their investigations. Often times these function somewhat like backdoors. Anthropic is large, but not mature. Additional changes must still take place for “backdoor” style partnerships to be effected.

2) The NSA can pretty much use any computer system they set their eyes on - famously including computers that were never connected to the internet secured in the middle of a mountain (Stuxnet). If they wanted to secretly utilize the Claude API without Claude finding out, that is within their capabilities. Google had to encrypt all their internal datacenter traffic to try to prevent the NSA from logging all their server-to-server traffic, after mistakenly thinking their internal networks were secure enough not to need that.

3) This isn’t about being “able” to do whatever the administration wants. This is the administration demonstrating the consequences of perceived insubordination to make other companies think twice about ever trying to limit use of corporate technology.

It's one of the hidden and forgotten revelations about the Snowden leaks, where he showed that the NSA had a bunch of filters in their top-secret classified systems to filter out communications from US citizens. Those filters exist because of Posse Comitatus.

The model of Claude the DoD is asking for more than likely doesn't even exist in a production ready form. The post-training would have to be completely different for the model the DoD is asking for.

Perhaps they should've found their spine a year earlier; right now their only hope is that the admin isn't stupid enough to crash the propped-up economy over petty bullshit. But knowing how they behave, well.

Hegseth's statement already leans towards accusations of treason and duplicity, I would say people trying to export the company would face significant risk of arrest or worse.

Best scenario it will get TikTok-ed, otherwise it will become the real national security risk

Had the exit happen, well, as US has a monopoly of compute on this planet for next 2-3 years at least, the company, even though they would take the researchers with them, will certainly cease to exist as it exists now.

edit: To be clear, Hegseth didn't create it, merely has popularized its use recently. Eg his speech at Quantico last Sept

We have soldiers, sailors, airman/women, Marines (who really do not like being called soldiers), Coast Guardsman/women, and now the Space Force. Granted, I do not know why "service member" did not catch on. Perhaps because "warfighter" is a bit shorter.

The reason that no one involved in the game's development objected to the word "warfighter" is that the U.S. Defense Department has used "warfighter" as a standard term for military personnel since the late 1980s or early 1990s: Thus Earl L. Wiener et al., Eds. Human Factors in Aviation, 1988

You're absolutely right to point that out -- thank you for catching it. I made a mistake in my previous response and that last act appears to have caused civilian casualties. Let me take a closer look and clarify the correct details for you.

(Will leave you to imagine the bullseye emoji, etc.)

If the government really wants to, it could try building its "Skynet" on open-source Chinese models.. which would be deeply ironic.

It's an honest question by the way - not trying to throw any gothas.

Just trying to understand if comoanies or people that don't orbit defense contracting are free to operate with Anthropic still or risk being sanctioned too.

Personally, I wish that the political alignment I favour was as Big Tent as Donald Trump's administration is. I think he can get Zohran Mamdani in the room and say "it's fine; say you think I'm a fascist" and then nonetheless get what he wants. But it just so happens that the other side isn't so. So such is life. We lose and our allies dwindle since anyone who would make an overture to us, we punish for the sin of not having been born a steadfast believer.

Our ideals are "If you weren't born supporting this cause, we will punish you for joining it as if you were an opponent". I don't think that's the path to getting what one wants.